


Not a Bad Day's Work

by merriman



Series: Coulson Lives Forever (And Ever) [2]
Category: Highlander: The Series, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crossover, Gen, Immortality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-28
Updated: 2015-01-28
Packaged: 2018-03-09 12:22:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3249536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merriman/pseuds/merriman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world isn't currently ending and a top agent isn't dead. That's practically a great day in Nick Fury's book.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not a Bad Day's Work

**Author's Note:**

> This has been a long time coming and it was mostly written well before Agents of SHIELD started airing and Winter Soldier came out. It's intended as a companion to the previous story in the series, A Routine Operation, and bridge between it and the next full story. Which is coming! I swear.

"I am certain you did not just tell me that the drawer was unlocked from the inside," Nick Fury told the hapless agent who'd made the initial discovery. "Because if you are telling me that one of our best agents is now undead, I believe I am going to be very displeased." Of course, if any agent was going to unlock a morgue drawer from the inside while dead or undead, Coulson seemed like a good bet. Coulson was always a good bet. The man was aggressively capable.

Given the scale he was working with, it took a hell of a lot for Nick Fury to classify a day as "bad." Unpleasant, sure. Inconvenient, yeah, he'd had plenty of those. A gigantic pain in the ass, well, that was any day he had to deal with Stark. But bad? Bad, he reserved for days when the universe was under threat of imminent destruction and he had to play nice with a bunch of sheltered politicians. Bad was relative. And the thing was, he'd assumed Coulson would be up and about sooner or later. What was tipping the day into "bad" territory was that Coulson was now missing. Along with a HYDRA agent they'd picked up a couple of months back and been holding for questioning. That was not the plan. That wasn't close to the plan.

On the screen in front of him Fury saw Agent Dawes swallow once, then twice, then glance down at his hands, then swallow again, then look up.

"The drawer was definitely opened from the inside." 

Fury gave the man credit. He was sticking to the truth, regardless of how ridiculous he must know it sounded. Fury used his own terminal to flag Dawes for promotion if he survived another week. 

"His personal effects are gone too."

"Everything?"

Dawes nodded. "Well, almost everything. The clothes he was in were half-burned in a trash receptacle in the parking lot but his other suit, weapon, phone, even his underwear. It's all missing."

Fury tapped one finger against the arm of his chair, once, taking in the various screens around himself. Each one was covered in reports from the battle. There was information from the autopsies of the aliens, the ongoing autopsy of the giant battle whale things, the tech they'd left behind, analysis of the hole Loki'd made with the Tesseract. Not to mention all the crap about rebuilding, which, frankly, wasn't even his job so why the hell were people sending him reports on it?

"Well, Agent Dawes. I'm sure you can understand, we're a little busy here in New York."

"Of course, sir."

"I don't have many agents to spare right now."

"Right, sir."

"So what are you going to do about this?"

The pause between his question and Dawes' answer was approximately half a second. Not bad.

"I'll find out what happened, Director Fury, sir."

"Yes you will," Fury said before closing the connection. Not that he expected Dawes to do it all on his own. If Coulson was actually out there he was likely operating way beyond a lower level agent like Dawes. And he'd show up eventually. He really wasn't the deserting type. Even if he was the undead.

\-----

To the ever-growing credit of Agent Dawes, who likely had not had time to find out he'd been given another level of security clearance, he didn't pester Fury with pointless shit. That right there was always welcome. What he did do was pull footage from every single external camera in a five mile radius of the S.H.I.E.L.D. facility Coulson had disappeared from, run it through the appropriate facial recognition programs and then sent Fury the gleanings. Along with a ridiculously tiny file that had apparently just been added to the system. It was labeled "Adams, Adam (Dr.)" and contained a photo of an angular-looking man with dark hair and a long-suffering expression, a license plate number and a couple of brief sentences linking him to both the HYDRA agent who'd escaped and a thief S.H.I.E.L.D. had been attempting to recruit for the past twenty years. So that was interesting.

Fury stared at the Adams file for a few moments, then put a call in to Dawes.

"Where are they?" he asked before Dawes could even acknowledge him.

"D.C., sir," Dawes said promptly. "Satellite footage has them arriving ten minutes ago at the house of a woman named Amanda Darrieux. I've pulled her file and I'm headed there now."

"Agent, you are about to walk into a situation that is well above your pay grade. Do you understand that?" Fury asked, getting up from his desk and walking up to the screen Dawes was on. "These people are dangerous. You might see things that you do not have the clearance to see. **Do you understand that?** "

Agent Dawes nodded. "I think so, sir. I've already seen a dead man walking around. That's not in my job description."

"We might want to do something about that," Fury noted. "Let this play, Agent. Do not move in until ordered. Coulson's to report here when he comes in." With that he hung up the line and went back to his desk.

He wasn't going to go see to this personally. He had things to do, after all. But he was damn sure going to have a nice long conversation with Coulson when it was over. Provided the man didn't die. Again.

\-----

With an alert keyed to both Dawes and Coulson, Fury knew when Coulson called for a cleanup crew to come and pick up himself and a prisoner. He made sure the transport was briefed about handling Faulk, who'd proven himself rather difficult to keep dead, which was always annoying. Dawes showed himself to be quite capable, reporting in on the situation and coordinating the convoy to transport Faulk to one of the nearby secure facilities. Coulson didn't chime in until he was standing in the doorway of the director's office.

"Didn't expect my badge to still work," he commented as he walked in. 

"I took the liberty of reactivating it," Fury told him. "What with you being in such good shape."

Coulson nodded, his face still holding that bland and slightly amused look that seemed to be his default. "I've always been quick to recover," he said. "Good immune system."

"I'll say," Fury agreed. "Most people's immune systems can't do shit about a spear through the back. I'll have to make a note in your file."

They stared at each other for a few minutes before an alarm rang on one of the monitors behind Fury's chair. He turned to look at it and read the incoming message: Faulk was locked up and screaming about being betrayed, so they'd put him in a soundproof cell. Good. And now he didn't have to worry about who'd blink first in his staring contest with Coulson. The monitor had blinked for him.

"Any details you want me to add to this note?"

"Sir, it appears there are some people who are harder to kill than usual. I've made contact with three of them now, one of whom is in our custody. If you'd like us to pick up the other two, I'm sure we could do that, even if they're currently getting out of town."

Fury waved that off. It wasn't like he didn't know about Darrieux. She wasn't tough to find, after all, and she'd refused recruitment several times so it was enough to keep tabs on her. The other man, however, he was going to keep a personal eye on him.

"No need," Fury assured Coulson. "We know about them. They tend to be pretty self-policing and now… Well, now we've got an inside man."

Coulson's slightly amused look turned into a full smile. "Yes, sir. Oh, and I'll be needing to find someone in the agency who can teach me how to use a sword."

Fury grinned and nodded. "Yeah, you do that. And let me know if you meet anyone else who's hard to kill."


End file.
